


Hope In A Handful Of Dust

by FayJay



Category: Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Backstory, Canon Compliant, F/F, Gen, M/M, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-06-01
Packaged: 2018-04-02 08:39:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4053694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FayJay/pseuds/FayJay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Traders come in sight of the Citadel, Toast feels hope for the first time since she heard the screams begin, and it feels like claws in her chest. Even across the miles of yellow sand, with the heat-haze shivering the horizon, she can see the shocking smear of green atop the rocks. Life.</p>
<p>“Do you see what I see?” breathes The Dag, pressing her face closer to the tinted window. Her voice is hoarse, and her too-pale skin has scorched an ugly red where she has sat too close to the glass. They are none of them ready for this topside life, not in any respect; nothing in the teachings of Squirrel or Miriam or The Magdalen prepared them for this.</p>
<p>“Mirage,” says Toast, crushing the seeds of hope in her heart. “It isn’t real.”</p>
<p>“Water,” says Cheedo, following their gaze. Bruising mottles her face with vivid purple and green. She hasn’t spoken in three days.</p>
<p>“It’s nothing,” Toast snarls, because it is better to be numb than to feel hope here at the end of the world. </p>
<p>Angharad frowns at her, and cards long fingers through Cheedo’s dusty hair. </p>
<p>“It’s water,” she says.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>(Toast-centric backstory for the wives.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hope In A Handful Of Dust

_In the Beforetimes the land was fat and green and lazy, swarming with life. Sweet water fell from the sky and salt water cradled the land, and fish and flesh and fowl grew so plentiful that folks took them in like family. There were no warlords. There were no slavers. There were no poisons falling from the sky, no poisons worming through the earth, no poisons carried on the wind._

_In the Beforetimes, folk flew through the clouds on silver wings, and they threw their voices clean across the world in speech and song. Knowing was free. All men were brothers; all women were sisters. The world was a garden._

_Then came The Fall, when the voices stilled, and the lights went out. The wells ran dry. The gardens died. The bombs spread poison through air and earth and sea._

_And after The Fall came The Harrowing, and the roads ran with blood, and we lost ourselves.  
Only through the foresight and the kindness of The First Mothers did our ancestors survive. Only through their courage was The Knowledge salvaged. They carried the deenay and the instruments of hope; they carried the books and the means of cleanliness; they carried the tools and the hope for a future. They built the Haven, and carved the tunnels of sunlight and the caverns of growing. They grew us whole and healthy, free from the poisons of the air and the earth. They gave us life and hope. Thanks be. _

* * *

When the Traders come in sight of the Citadel, Toast feels hope for the first time since she heard the screams begin, and it feels like claws in her chest. Even across the miles of yellow sand, with the heat-haze shivering the horizon, she can see the shocking smear of green atop the rocks. Life.

“Do you see what I see?” breathes The Dag, pressing her face closer to the tinted window. Her voice is hoarse, and her too-pale skin has scorched an ugly red where she has sat too close to the glass. They are none of them ready for this topside life, not in any respect; nothing in the teachings of Squirrel or Miriam or The Magdalen prepared them for this.

“Mirage,” says Toast, crushing the seeds of hope in her heart. “It isn’t real.”

“Water,” says Cheedo, following their gaze. Bruising mottles her face with vivid purple and green. She hasn’t spoken in three days.

“It’s nothing,” Toast snarls, because it is better to be numb than to feel hope here at the end of the world. 

Angharad frowns at her, and cards long fingers through Cheedo’s dusty hair. 

“It’s water,” she says.

* * *

Before the Fisher of Men came limping to their door, life had a pattern. 

When Toast was a child, she had been the nimblest of the tunnel rats, squeezing through the mirror tubes at nightfall to tend the lenses, once the fierce reflected sun no longer poured and bounced and burned through the labyrinth to bring light into the hydroponics cavern. Toast’s slender little fingers had checked each mirror for cracks by candlelight, cleaning and polishing and brushing away cobwebs and egg sacs. There were scorpions and lizards and scuttling things in the tunnels which could kill if you weren’t careful, but Toast was sharp-eared and sharp-eyed, and she never got stung or bitten. Sometimes she would catch rats or snakes, driving her knife into the back of their little necks until they grew still; then she would bring them to the Magdelaine to add to the pot. Life was simple. 

But time was she grew too big for the tunnels, and then Squirrel called her to work in the Scriptorium as a stack rat, memorising Mother Miriam’s stories and scribing them down in careful letters. She would rise with the first blush of reflected dawn and wash away the night’s dirt with half a cup of water before kneeling to mutter lauds with her sisters. Then they broke the fast, and Toast walked with Crow and The Dag and Gamilla to do a morning stint in the hydroponic chamber until the bell chimed Ters. If they weren’t on kitchen duty they had an hour or so to themselves before Sext, and Toast used the time to grind up carapaces for ink, or to read over new scriptures just for the quiet delight of knowing more about the world: about the Beforetimes, and the Founding, and the plans for the Times To Come. They called her Toast the Curious, and later Toast the Knowing. After lunch, she worked in the stacks, scrambling through the tottering piles of tomes and scrolls and looseleaf in search of whatever documents Squirrel demanded, and then she’d set to copying until vespers. Some days she’d sit at Mother Miriam’s feet, scribing down her stories. And so day followed day, and week followed week, and Toast grew into her womanhood surrounded by quiet and learning. Life was safe.

And then the Fisher of Men came, and the Scriptorium burned, and nothing was simple or safe ever again.

* * *

“I want to go home,” says Cheedo, her voice high and lost and thready. Toast’s scowl deepens. For the first week, Cheedo had fallen into whispering this phrase like a chant, like a prayer, until The Dag slapped her so hard that her head bounced off the wall. She’d been ashamed afterwards, begged Cheedo’s pardon, and they had curled up together in the corner like exhausted children. But Cheedo had stopped muttering about home, and Toast counted that a blessing. 

“Home’s gone,” she snaps. “They’re all dead or worse.”

Cheedo makes a keening sound, and Angharad gathers her into her arms, rubbing awkward circles into her spine. Toast looks away, waiting for the deceptive scribble of green atop the distant citadel to vanish like the illusion it surely is.

In the corner of the bouncing truck, Capable snores.

* * *

The Fisher of Men was a pitiful sight when they found him huddled up in the entrance cave. At first they didn’t notice him at all, too caught up in one another, but then the candlelight caught the white tangle of his hair splayed out on the dirty stone and Toast gasped, pulling Crow behind her. 

“Shit,” Crow said, darting a horrified glance at Toast. Her long brown fingers tightened around Toast’s hand convulsively. They weren’t supposed to be topside at all, but sometimes it could be difficult to find a private place in the caverns, and they’d both had a little too much of Spider’s moonshine that night. Breaking the rule had seemed daring, but not really bad. What was the worst that could happen?

When the topsider failed to spring to his feet and start breathing fire, they both began to laugh at their own burst of fear. 

“Just a deader,” said Crow. She glanced down at Toast’s face and smiled sheepishly. “Not exactly romantic after all, sorry. Here – let me.”

Crow was in the midst of heaving the body outside for the carrion birds to pick at when the dusty bundle of stick-like limbs gave a twitch, and the gummy old eyelids peeled open to fix her with an indignant, bloodshot glare. Crow yelped, and dropped the topsider in the dust.

“Shit!” she said again, scrubbing her hands down her arms. “It’s a live one!” 

That was the First Rule: no topsiders. Oh, sometimes the rangers brought back stories of bones in the desert, or cars spotted on the distant horizon; sometimes they even returned with weatherbeaten treasures: bolts of sunbleached fabric, or metal scoured into fantastical shapes by the stormwinds, or rust-raddled engine parts. But there had never been a living topsider sighted so close to the Haven, not in all the years of Toast’s remembering.

“Kill it,” said Toast, after a long, frozen moment. Crow flinched.

“…She’s old,” she said, looking down at the skeletal shape on the floor. “Like Squirrel and the Magdalen. She’s no threat.” Crow had always been too soft, for all her size and strength.

“No topsiders,” Toast said, trying to ignore how small and fragile the topsider looked. The whisps of dirty white hair contrasted starkly with the darkness of the topsider’s skin, reminding her of Miriam in a way that hurt to think about. “And I think it’s a man anyway.” 

They both stared down at the flimsy bundle of skin and bones, pulse fluttering rabbit-fast in its throat, and wondered about what that could mean.

“She’s dying, Toast,” said Crow. “Or he is. Does it have to be a hard death?”

“All death is hard.”

“Yes, but – what would Mother Miriam say?”

Toast swallowed. “Miriam is dead. And she would say no topsiders.”

But Crow had already won, and they both knew it. Miriam’s death was still too raw and recent, and neither of them could bring themselves to hurt another soul who looked as shrunken and helpless as Miriam had in her last days.

“This isn’t Miriam,” Toast tried. “He’s a topsider. They eat their young. They poisoned the world.”

The old man flinched away from her, clutching at Crow’s leg with brittle fingers coated with dust. One of his feet was all wrong, Toast realized with a rush of horror: a bloated toeless stump, like a club.

“Please…” he rasped, blinking gummy eyes up at her. His face was a wizened mask of despair. “Please?”

“Shit,” muttered Toast, looking away. And she helped Crow carry their murderer back into the Haven. 

* * *

“Will they eat us?” asks Cheedo, when the first wave of white-painted warboys surrounds the convoy. She sounds more curious than afraid, as though she has passed through fear and come out the other side. The air is thick with the revving of engines and whooping cries of glee, as the Traders and these new warboys face off and take each other’s measure. Corran Trader swaggers out in his tatterdemalion armour, helmet bristling with rusty spines. At his side his guards flex their muscles and point weapons at the newcomers, who howl derisively back.

“That’s not why he kept us,” Toast says. 

Cheedo’s face is blank. “They ate the Magdalen,” she says. “And…”

“We were there,” says The Dag, before Cheedo can force them all to remember too much. “We know. Guess we got lucky,” she adds, with something that isn’t really a smile slanting her mouth.

“They might eat us,” says Capable quietly, from the corner. Toast didn’t notice her waking. “That might not be so bad. It would be – quick. Probably.”

“You know that’s not why they kept us. We’re stock. Breeding stock. He said. If we weren’t stock we’d be – it would be worse,” says Toast. The men haven’t touched them. Not like they did the Magdalen and the other old ones, before - before. That tells its own tale.

“Still,” says Capable, thoughtfully, “We’re flawed goods. The Mothers wouldn’t have used our eggs in the next cycle.”

Toast knows what she means. They’re all too pale to do well in this scorched world. They’re the leftovers. Crow and Gamilla and Jasmin and Spider and all the others, the ones with the good strong deenay and all the melanin in their skin, they were dragged away in the first convoy, with the Fisher of Men smiling at the helm, cackling about what a fine price he would get for them at the Market. Toast and the others are the scraps, results of Miriam’s tinkering with the unknown deenay banks she’d inherited. In the Haven they weren’t allowed to feel inadequate, because melanin mostly mattered for the Afterdays, when their children’s children might emerge from the Downunder, if the world ever grew mild again. In the caves, it didn’t make a difference. Out here, though, their pale skin is a symbol of a weakness they can’t afford. 

“Maybe where we’re going, it won’t matter,” says Angharad, uncertainly. Her eyes are fixed on the green in the distance. “Maybe it’s safe harbour.”

“And maybe the land will run with milk and honey, and the heavens will weep sweet water onto our faces,” mutters The Dag. 

Capable has been watching the powdered warboys with her eyes narrowed for a while. “Maybe they like white skin,” she says, cautiously. 

Toast glances down at her own flesh and rolls her eyes. She was ghost-pale compared to Miriam and Crow and Spider, and the recognized beauties of the Haven; with her damned luck, she is going to be not pale enough where they’re going now.

* * *

Cheedo was tending The Fisher of Men when it happened. 

They were in the infirmary with her, perching on an empty bed beside the one in which the old man lay, united by a sense of awkward duty. Somebody should be there to see him off, even if he was no Miriam. Old Mouse, the Physic, was snoozing in the corner, her head lolling on the stem of her neck as she snored gently; so far she hadn’t noticed that they had brought a topsider in to die. Hopefully it would all be over before she could wake up and disapprove.  
Toast watched the quiet efficiency with which Cheedo moved through her realm, and tried to believe that Cheedo was the new Mother. Miriam had been Mother for as long as Toast could remember; it seemed impossible that anyone could have charge of the deenay banks and the birthing labs without being old as the hills. 

“When will you make your first batch?” Toast asked, as Cheedo thumbed through the Book of ReGenesis.

Cheedo’s smile was shy, but hopeful. “Next year, I think,” she said. “The Snake Dancing litter will turn seven; they’ll be old enough to help with the babies then.”

“Can you really do it?” Toast didn’t want to be jealous, but this was a Knowing that she couldn’t share. The Great Secrets had been kept for the Physics and the Mothers, who knew the way of bringing children into the world without a father or a womb.

Cheedo nodded. “I helped with Snake Dancing,” she said, and Toast’s jaw dropped a little. That was a lot of trust to place in a girl as young as Cheedo had been back then. “I know how to do it. It’s only – the generators are old, Toast, and for all that Spider and her crew do their best to patch them and fix them and keep it all running –they can’t last forever. That frightens me.”  
Toast quirked an eyebrow at her. “Maybe you should cook us up a boy child or two this time, in case we need to start doing things the old fashioned way.” She was more than half joking, but Cheedo nodded at her, serious-eyed.

“I’ve been thinking that,” she said. “Mouse says it’s asking for trouble, but I think it’s a good backup plan. If the generators fail, then the refrigeration banks die, and everything is lost. That’s too fragile a hope for us to pin all our futures on.”

“You’re going to bring men into the world?” said Crow, shock clear in her voice. 

“You already did,” Cheedo said, wryly, nodding down at the old man. 

Crow and Toast both winced. 

“Only for a little while,” protested Crow. “Just until he dies.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be for a while yet,” said Cheedo, glancing at the notes she had scribbled down earlier on. “He’s in pretty good shape.”

Toast turned back to look at the patient, and was disconcerted to realise he was watching them through half-lidded eyes. 

“Oh,” she said, trying to stifle a sudden queasy feeling in her belly. And that was when they heard the first scream. 

Cheedo locked eyes with her across the room. “Did you lock the Outer Door, Toast?” she asked, her voice horribly even. Toast looked over at Crow. 

“I was carrying – I thought – didn’t you?” said Crow with dawning horror, both of them turning instinctively back towards the passage that led to the Outer Door. 

But it was too late. It had been too late as soon as they stepped outside and saw The Fisher of Men lying there, looking so deceptively helpless. Bait. 

* * *

“That skalt-licking bastard looks mighty happy about something,” says the Dag, her voice a sing-song with an edge like shattered glass. She’s leaning up against the window, watching Corram Trader striding towards them through the sand. “I’m thinking that doesn’t bode too well for us, girls.”

The light is blinding when he unlocks the door; instinctively they all shrink away, but he locks one meaty hand around Cheedo’s wrist and yanks her out onto the hot sand. The powdered warboys cheer and whoop. 

“Don’t be shy, ladies!” he yells, with horrible good humour. His teeth glint when he smiles: row upon row of polished metal points. As the uglier of the two bodyguards drags her out after Cheedo, Toast wonders what it would take to make him bite through his own tongue. “Good news, my treasures! We’ve found somebody who thinks you’re worth ten times your weight in guzzoline.”

* * *

Toast did not weep all that long, terrible night while the Traders ransacked the Haven. Not until they began to burn the Scriptorium, and she heard Squirrel, weeping like a madwoman, giving up the codes to the genebank. 

The Traders gutted the genebanks, and the smouldering remnants of the Scriptorium. They took everything, and killed anyone they couldn’t sell. Eventually. 

* * *

“Immortan Joe! Immortan Joe!”

It takes a while for Toast to make out what the powder-white warboys are chanting as they lead the women through the cavernous hallways. Surprisingly none of them has laid a hand upon the women so far – it’s almost as if the warriors think that they are cursed. Or that touching them would be more than their lives were worth. 

“I don’t think they like him for his looks,” breathes The Dag, and Toast drags her eyes away from the great blood-red skull motif that covers the wall and looks instead at the man – for it must be a man – squatting on a throne made of torn and hammered car parts built up around a leather seat. He doesn’t look human. He looks like a demon from one of Squirrel’s religious books, and his eyes are fixed upon them, burning with terrible glee.

“We can endure this,” whispers Angharad, her voice so soft Toast can barely hear her words, but fierce in a way Toast hadn’t realized that she could be. “We are alive. We are all that is left. We must endure this until we find a way out. For their sakes.”

“Full Lifes! Full Life Breeders for Immortan Joe!” crows the man who bought them with guzzoline, and all around the powder-dusted warriors hoot and cheer.

Cheedo stumbles, and Toast can tell that she’s on the verge of bolting; she’s fairly sure that won’t end well. But then Angharad steps up to her side, graceful as ever, and wraps an arm around her waist. 

Immortan Joe rises to his feet, assisted by a pair of solid soldiers, and his eyes are locked upon Angharad in her torn blue robe. He takes slow, deliberate steps towards them, his hands flexing at his side, and every step closer feels like a death knell. 

Toast scans the room for an escape, a distraction, anything – and finds herself caught by the sight of one other woman in the midst of all these shirtless men. A woman with hair as short as Crow’s, and a shock of black grease over her eyes, and a metal arm. She is standing very still, and watching them with an expression that Toast cannot hope to read, but when their eyes meet Toast feels a shock of recognition, of being truly seen, and she almost dares to hope.   
Immortan Joe is a hand’s breadth away, now, running his hands over their flanks and touching their hair carefully, cautiously, as if he doesn’t quite dare believe his luck. 

“Do you know who I am?” he asks Angharad. She stands a little taller, keeping the barrier of her body between him and the others.

“You are Immortan Joe,” she says clearly, and in that moment she looks like a queen from one of the story books. “And my husband.”

Toast holds her breath. There is a power in naming things; she thinks that perhaps, just perhaps, Angharad has turned them from powerless prisoners into something with a little more leverage. If, that is, this man agrees. 

In the pause that follows Toast can hear her own blood pounding in her ears; she half expects him to backhand Angharad and drag her off by the hair to punish her presumption. 

Instead he throws his head back and laughs, and all around them the warboys whoop and yell and holler their glee. 

"Oh, you are splendid," he says at last. "And so you shall be called. Now come, my wives." 

As they follow him into the future, Toast’s eyes return to the woman with her metal arm, still standing by the dais. They can endure this, she tells herself. Until they find a way out.


End file.
